MICROSTORY OF ART

MICROSTORY OF ART
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Dedicated to Solarpunk

(Picture: youtube.com; ava beck bucket; @salidabooks)

(29.9.2022) It is Thursday, temperature is 20.4 degree, the gas price will go up by 45% by 1st of October here, our solar lamp (made in China) is functioning only every now and then (which has nothing to do with it being loaded or not), so: why not writing about the imagery of ecological utopia (as long as we have still power, respectively light)?

(Picture: youtube.com; Andrewism; source of image is unknown to me)

I remember than, in 1989, our history teacher wheeled a TV set into the classroom. Did we have a feel that it was about history in the making now, about the history of our time? I don’t remember that. Perhaps we were just teenagers, busy mainly with growing up; but perhaps, since I remember the wheeling of a TV set into the classroom, we had such feel, or it was just a mix of both. And since we were teenagers, it was our time.

In terms of art history, Solarpunk is art history in the making. It is happening just now, that people, interested in Solarpunk as literature or as a visual style, also define it as art (or as the crossing of art and politics). And one could say that Solarpunk is the actual iconography of sustainability. Since sustainability, the discourse of sustainability, includes a utopian element. It is about securing the future – which has to be imagined in some way. And this is what Science Fiction does, this is what ecotopian literature does, and this is what Solarpunk does. And this is why I am including a discussion of Solarpunk in the context of my art history of sustainability.

Solarpunk can be defined in terms of literature. This is also what most people do when defining Solarpunk. Often they start with saying that this is a subgenre of Science-Fiction-writing, defined, among other things, by its optimistic stance: because Solarpunk is the imagination of a sustainable future, powered by renewable energy, a future in which the energy problem is solved and only renewable energies are used.
I have browsed the Solarpunk anthologies (which include also some art), and I cannot confirm the idea that Solarpunk is offering an optimistic perspective only; it seemed to me that it is also, obviously also, about the fears concerning the future. And also about the fear that the future could bring rather dystopia than utopia.
Be it as it may, and I am interested in the imagery of Solarpunk here, but not only in terms of style, but also in terms of content.
It seems imteresting to me that Solarpunk has been defined as style (Art Nouveau elements, natural colors and so on), because this could be a sign of the times: that one does define styles rather than to work out a political utopia. Style comes first, philosophy later. And this can turn out in various ways: such styles can become rather regressive, in that there seems to be not more than design elements (some sound bites, stolen here and there, do not make an actual philosophy), but it can also become quite progressive, in that the combination of design elements (the single elements do not exist for nothing), can inspire (new) political and philosophical thinking. Perhaps – let’s be optimistic – philosophy indeed comes later.
And, let’s be honest, Solarpunk is, in many ways, not really new. It is up-cycled Ecotopia plus star architects.
Ecotopia was the title of an iconic novel by Ernest Callenbach and did influence the utopian thinking, the ecotopian thinking since the 1970s. Henning Ottmann, in his formidable – formidable! – multi-volume history of political thinking, included a discussion of the novel, and Ottmann seemed to be rather amused than impressed: as far as the politics, the economy and the society of the ecotopia described in that novel is concerned. Not actually something based on woke philosophy, to be honest! In terms of artistic production rather egalitarian than liberal (no star architects, this means, and actually not artists at all, because excellence of individuals is not wanted).
And all the questions raised, concerning Ecotopia, can also be raised concerning Solarpunk: what way of solving conflicts will the future, as imagined by Solarpunk writers and artists, bring? Will there be artists at all? Obviously there will be technological gadgets, because Solarpunk as well as Ecotopia, is technology-friendly. But it seems, especially in pictures, technology is often rather hidden in much green, suggesting that one can have the iPhone, but one does not tell the children that it cannot be harvested from kitchen herbs! Could it be that there is also the danger of greenwashing inherent to Solarpunk? Since one does know that, for example, vertical-forest-scyscrapers are actually not necessarily in harmony with the ideals of sustainability!

(Picture: Shiny Things; Gardens by the Bay, Singapore)

Much of Solarpunk imagery, as far as I can see, is what one clever individual on Tiktok (@salidabooks) described as ›building a sustainable world on top of the one that did not work out‹. Because we see futuristic cityscapes, we see architecture which is simply overgrown and thus delved in green. And indeed a retro element comes in by much Art Nouveau (solar panels may represent the new).
But the question remains (also as far as images are concerned): is this more than just a re-combination of design elements? In some way it is: solar power, at least, does seem to work, and philosophy might come later, the philosophy of actual utopian thinking which does spell out the nature of that future. One does want it to be sustainable. But how to reach that goal? Also this question had also been raised by Ernest Callenbach, who, during the 1980s, published a prequel to Ecotopia, about the emerging of that steady-state-society.
›Aesthetics is not enough‹, as another clever individual (on YouTube) did put it. But an actual utopia of Solarpunk has not yet been worked out, it seems to me. Ecotopia might have been lacking the design elements, but in terms of raising questions it still offers more to think about that most of the Solarpunk imagery does (I am not speaking of the literature here, which I have not systematically studied). But as I have said: it is art history in the making. Vincent Callebaut might be the architect of Solarpunk, in that his architecture does seem to comply with what Solarpunk writers and artists seem to strive for. And we will have an eye on what comes next.

PS: I have tried also to prompt the artificial intelligence called Craiyon, to make a painting of Solarpunk in the style of Pieter Bruegel. This did not work out very well. But I may come back to that some other time.

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